The Pixel Tablet was a good idea and Google should make a better one

One of the few tablets I've wanted to use instead of an iPad

Google is not necessarily known as a company willing to stick with its own products, and its history with tablets is a good example.

The compact, affordable Nexus 7 was a popular product in 2012 and received a solid follow-up the next year, but subsequent efforts have been scattershot to say the least. Google pivoted to the iPad-esque Nexus 9 in 2014, then the awkward keyboard-equipped Pixel C in 2016 before landing on the weird 2018 Pixel Slate, which was basically a Chromebook.

It took five years before Google would attempt another tablet. The straightforwardly named Pixel Tablet was released in the summer of 2023, and its equally straightforward take on the use case for Android tablets appears not to have been successful; it’s generally out of stock on Google’s regional websites, with no update or successor in sight. Android Authority reported in 2024 that a planned “Pixel Tablet 2” had been cancelled, while leaving the door open for a potential future model at some point down the line.

Anyway, that same two-year-old Pixel Tablet happened to be one of my favourite gadget buys of last year.

This is such a simple, breezy product. Google did not have any aspirations of replacing your laptop, or redefining the future of computing, or anything like that. It’s just a tablet that’s uniquely great at tablet things.